
Resemblances of a fortuitous character have often been point¬ 
ed out between languages of the Old World and languages of the 
New, but real alSnity between linguistic families of the two 
hemispheres has never been scientifically proved. The childish 
supposition that the American Indians might be descendants of 
the lost ten tribes of Israel gave a lively start to inquiries of 
this character, and this impetus has not subsided yet. To search 
for affinities by mutually comparing the languages of this contin¬ 
ent only shows more scientific understanding, and in several in¬ 
stances has led to important results. Several tribes living now 
at enormous distances from their parent stock have been proved 
to have separated from it at an early period, as the Apache and 
Ndvajo from the Tinne; the Tiitelo from the Dakota; the Mai- 
pure from the Moxo; and the Huastec, near Yera Cruz, Mexico, 
seems to have been severed from its cognate idioms, the Maya, 
Tzendal, Quiche, etc., by an immigration of tribes of alien race. 
In the Eastern hemisphere we see the Malay dialect of Mozam¬ 
bique far distant from the other Malay-Polynesian idioms, and 
the same holds good for the Brahui idiom of the Belutches, which 
pertains to the great Dravidian stock of the Dekhan. All of these 
are separated from each other by linguistic areas spoken by quite 
different races of men. 

The true method of testing two languages for their mutual 
affinity has often been discussed by linguists. Had their remarks 
been heeded, we would not constantly see the Aztec Teotl God 
declared to be akin with Greek theos God. The investigation 
is of a double character, for it extends over the words or the 
lexical part of the languages, and over their grammatic 
inflections, etc., especially over the affixes. 

1. The homonymous words showing a similar or related sig¬ 
nification in both languages compared, must be carefully divided 
into loan words, borrowed from another nation; and in words, 
which apparently form part of a common stock. In many in¬ 
stances this discrimination is an easy one, in others very difficult, 
and then no decision can be arrived at without a great amount 
of ethnographic and historic knowledge, to which an intimate 
acquaintance with the phonetic peculiarities must associate itself. 


2 






The discovery of loan words is of great importance for tracing 
ancient migrations, inter-tribal commerce, elements of culture 
and the progress of civilization. A nation borrowing no words 
from neighbors or foreigners, like the Iroquois, appears to tlie 
ethnologist in a very different light from tribes showing more 
receptiveness. On the other side, the homonymous terms which 
are not loan words and seem to have sprung from a common 
source, can be proven to be cognate only by etymologic analysis, 
viz: by proving that both have a common radix. This presup¬ 
poses a thorough acquaintance with the family to which both 
belong, in several or in all of its dialects. 

2. Grammatic affixes express relation, and are either pre¬ 
fixes to the radix, suffixes to it, or infixes inserted into the root. 
Affixes borrowed from other languages are sometimes met with, 
but this is rather exceptional. If two languages are cognate, a 
portion at least of all affixes will agree in both; the remoter the 
affinity, the more we shall see them altered according to the 
phonetic laws prevailing in the family and slight differences 
will be observed in their functions also; the stronger the affinity, 
the larger will be the number of the affixes coinciding. All 
affixes are roots, often ground down by wear and tear to simple 
vowels or consonants, aod if from the most profoundly studied 
languages we can draw any inferences upon all tongues, all 
grammatic affixes serving to express relation consist of so-called 
pronominal roots, or radices of relation. Hence, if we wish to 
discover the full and more ancient form of these affixes, we have 
to look out for the (demonstrative) pronouns of the language. 

The affixes serving for the derivation of verbs and nouns must 
be examined next and reduced to their simplest form, viz: to 
their radices. The roots of derivational affixes are roots of quality 
as well as radices of pronominal origin; many coincide with the 
grammatic (or infiectional) roots mentioned before. 

3. After achieving these fundamental inquiries, w^e proceed 
to investigate and comjpare the position of the affixes before, in, 
or after the radix; the inflection of the nouns and verbs; the 
position of the words in the sentence, and many other structural 
points of minor importance. All these comparisons must be 
made under the guidance of the phonetic laws traceable in both 
idioms to be compared. 

After eliminating all the loan elements and scoring up the 
real affinities between the languages compared, we look at the 
radices obtained from words and signs of relation. A small 
amount of similar roots would not decide with us the question of 
affinity. Languages really akin to each other always show a 


3 


considerable number of roots coinciding; not only of onoraato- 
poetic roots, for some of them prove little only, but of roots of 
quality (called sometimes verbal roots) and especially of pro¬ 
nominal roots. Could we compare American languages in the 
shape they were spoken three thousand years ago, as we are en¬ 
abled to do with Greek, Sanscrit, Chaldean, Egyptian, etc., this 
would facilitate our investigations enormously and give infinitely 
more certainty to our results; but as things stand now, we have 
to institute comparisons by uniting the material of all dialects of 
one family, and placing reliance on this historic basis, extend 
our comparisons from it to other idioms. 


Linguistic Notes. 

BY ALBERT S. GATSCHET. 

Maskoki. Tribal names for large Indian communities are 
not frequent in the United States of America; Maskoki is one 
of them, and the linguistic origin of this name and that of 
Chd’hta has not been shown yet. It is the appellation given to 
the Creeks, who anciently divided themselves in Upper Creeks 
(on Alabama River and tributaries), and in Lower Creeks (on 
Chatahutchi River). The whites called them Creeks on account 
of their location on the creeks of the Gulf coast, Indians always 
settling on rivers (or open waters). In the 18th century Maskoki 
is constantly written Muscogee or Muskhogee, thp g being gut¬ 
tural and not palatal; that it was written Muscogee and not 
Mascogee, as it is pronounced by the Indians, is not to be won¬ 
dered at, for the English language, with its surd, indistinct and 
imperfect vocalization, will convert the clearest a into a u. It 
may seem unjustifiable to consider Maskoki as the national 
name of the community, for we never hear the old Creek con¬ 
federacy called the Maskoki confederacy. Neither Creeks nor 
Hitchiti can explain this name, though the second part, oki, seems 
to be the Hitchiti oki, water^ which still appears in many local 
names belonging to that Maskoki dialect: Okelakni, yellow water; 
Okifeiioke,wavering waters; Ocmiilgi, bubbling water; Okitcho- 
bi, large river, and in Oconee River. The Creek term for water is 
wiwa, o-iwa; for river^ hd-tchi; for swamp, opilua, apilua; (hence 
the town name Opelika.) Analogy will induce us to seek in the 
term Creek an interpretation of the Indian name; but since the 
dialects of the Maskoki group ignore such a word as Maskdki, 



4 


we must seek for it in other languages. The Shawnees call a 
Creek man Hum^sko, the Creek nation or people Humaskogi. 
Here the hu- is the predicative prefix: ''he is, she is, they are,^^ 
and appears often as ho-, hui-, ku-. Thus humaskogi means: 
“they are Masko,” the suffix -gi being the plural ending of tlie 
animate order of substantives. No Shawnee, Delaware or other 
southern Algonkin dictionary was ever printed whicli could in¬ 
form us of the meaning of masko. But Bev. Lacombe’s Dic¬ 
tionary of the cognate Cree or Knisteno (Canada) gives: maskek, 
marsh, swamp, trembling ground unsafe to walk upon; Maskeko- 
wiyiniw, the Maskegons or Bogmen, a tribe of Crees, also called 
Maskekowok. Bev. Watkins’ Cree Dictionary has: muskag, 
rnuskak, swamp, marsh; Muskfigoo, Swampy Indian; Muskagoo- 
wew, he is a Swampy Indian. These Muskegons are said to have 
been formerly Odshibwe Indians, who have left Lake Superior 
and joined the Crees. Bishop Baraga’s Dictionary of Odshibwe 
(Cincin., 1853), has md,shkig, plural maskigon, swamp, marsh; 
Mashki sibi. Bad Biver (correct form: Mashkigi sil)i, lit. “Swamp 
Biver.”) Bev. Eug. Yetromile’s manuscript Dictionary of 
Ahndki has: megua’k, fresh water marsh; maskehegat, fetid 
water. The Shawnee word for creek, brook, hraiudi of river, 
is methtekui; since Shawnee often has the th whei'e tlie northern 
Algonkin dialects have's, the syllable meth- may be connected 
with maskek of Cree. Cf. thipi, river^ in Shawnee; sibi, in 
Odshibwe; sibe, in Potewaterni and Sauk. Caleb Atwater’s 
Shawnee vocabulary (Archgeol. Amer., Yol. I., p. 290) has: mis- 
kegiie, miskekopke, wet ground, swamp. I liave adduced 

all these terms to render the derivation of Maskoki from a Shaw¬ 
nee term probable ovl\\ ; its signification of ''Marshmen," 

" Bwampmen,'' or, perha2)S, " Oreekmen,'' less hypothetical. 
The country of the Chd’hta and Chikasa also was a succession 
of swamps, low grounds and marshes. The proposed deriva¬ 
tion would account for the tradition of the Ilitchiti, that they 
originated by coming out of a canebrake. Tlie name Hit- 
chiti is commonly derived from the Creek woi’d ahitchida, 
“to look up the stream,” which stream was Flint Biver, which 
the Creeks call Thlonotiska (thlonoto, fiint.) Should my deriva¬ 
tion prove correct, the orthography Maskogi would be just as cor¬ 
rect as Maskoki. 

Many Shawnees lived among the Creeks wlien they held the 
territories of the present Gulf States, and the colonies on the 
Atlantic seaboard could obtain the term Maskoki from none 
better than from these southern (sdwano, south) Algonkins. 
The name of an Upper Creek town, Taskigi, has not been 


5 


explained up to this day, and, having a similar ending, may be 
traced to a similar source. The uational legend of the Maskoki, 
as preserved by von Reck, and republished by D. G. Briuton, 
does not yet call by a national name the Creek tribes, whose 
early historic traditions it ti’ansmits, and even iriuch later, onl^' 
town and tribal names seem to have existed, as Kiisa, Kasi’hta, 
Obika, Wetumka, Ka-us4ti, Kowita. The only vorn,prehe7isivf 
names whi(*h large Indian communities give to themselves are 
those which mean mm, people. They may appear undei* the 
form of an adjective or participle: Dakota, “the allied.” All 
others ai*e given to them by other Indians or white colonists, and 
only the names of tribes or bands, that is, of smaller communi¬ 
ties, are sometimes traceable to the people itself, and most gen¬ 
erally to the locality which it inhabits. 

Bimini. A poetic object figuring in the history of the 
discovery of the New World was the fountain of Bimini^ situ¬ 
ated on an island of the same name, hundreds of leagues north 
of Hispaniola. This fountain or source had the power of re¬ 
storing youth and of giving perpetual health and vigor to the 
sick and decrepit; such was the firm belief of all the Indians 
of the Antilles, and even of the mainland of Central America. 
This fountain was probably one of the causes which prompted 
Ponce de Leon and Plernando de Soto to undertake their expedi¬ 
tions to Florida, for it was most generally supposed to be situated 
on the outskirts of this peninsula. Worship of sources and foun¬ 
tains is very common among all nations, but' here we have a 
combination of this worship with the myth of an earthly para¬ 
dise or “island of the happy.”- The name was variously pro¬ 
nounced, but when we adopt Bimnni as the cui*i*ent form, this 
is composed of the two Timncua words: \\)mQ^v:atei% and mine, 
mini, which means (1) great. (2) high^ and (8) first., prominent, 
superior; the second signification has also become a substantive, 
hill, mountain. Hence Bimini is a contraction of ibine and 
mine, mini, “water of superior quality.” But the Timucua lan¬ 
guage, spoken along the eastern coast of Florida, was not the 
only idiom which furnished a name to the far-famed island and 
its fountain; they were known also by the Carib name Boiuca, 
a term easily identified with boyaicou, magieAa^i., sorcerer., con¬ 
jurer, shaman (Raymond Breton, Dictionn. caraibe-fran 9 ais, 
Auxerre, 1665; page 83); occurring also on the northern sea¬ 
board of South America in a hundred various forms (piaces, 
piajes, piace, paje, paggi, paye, etc.) 




B 


A COURSE for studying the language of Chinese olScials (or 
Mandarin language) has been opened in Harvard University, 
Cambridge, Mass., on Oct. 22. This class is o])en to any com¬ 
petent person, and the lessons are given daily. The Chinese 
who come to America are almost all from the southern provinces 
of the empire, and do not understand this official idiom, which 
has its origin in the north and is understood in the more north¬ 
erly ports, as Shanghai, Tientsin, Chefoo. The Mandarin lan¬ 
guage is the written language of China and the vehicle of Chi¬ 
nese literature, and the course at Harvard will therefore be 
available for the following persons: 1. Students wishing to 
accpiaint themselves at first hand with Chinese history and litera¬ 
ture. 2. Persons proposing to fit themselves for consular serv¬ 
ice in China, or for otherwise transacting business with Chinese 
officials, all of whom speak this idiom, whatever the local dialect 
may be. 

Hot very long ago the Vicoirite of Porto-Seguro published 
a book on the Turanian origin and affinity of the Brazilian 
Tupis,'^^' by which he claims to prove the Asiatic origin of these 
Brazilian savages and their congeners, the Caribs and Cfuarani, 
by the comparative method of linguistics and ethnology. He 
has searched all the languages of the Orient and Europe to find 
a satisfactory clue for the origin of the Tiipi, and finally found 
it in the easternmost of tlie Uralo-Altaic dialects of Siberia. All 
his linguistic facts are advanced only hypothetically and with 
caution, and it is very well for him to do so. The Ostiak Mon¬ 
gols had many Tupi words (page 142), for he finds that the Ostiak 
kura canoe, bira river^ aka, yeka or takai head^ guma blacky 
tsanga black are the Tupi igara, paifi>, akan, una, tinga. The an¬ 
cient Egyptians and the Carians of Asia Minor are to him Tura¬ 
nians also, and the latter, bold navigators and following in the 
wake of the Phoenicians, crossed the Atlantic several centui*ies 
before our era to establish colonies among the Tnpis in Brazil. 
Thus he explains how the Egyptian To-Pan “the Pan of the 
home country,” the Typlion of the Oreeks, became the Tupan 
or God of Thunder in Brazil, and why the Tupi call themselves 
Cary-6s (progeny of the Carys) and the Galibi of the northern 
coast of South America Caribs or Cara-ibs. The onlv article of 
real value in this book is the seventh chapter, which (‘ontains a 
short extract of the Tupi grammar, taken from the early authors 
on the subject. 

*Le Vicomte de Porto-Seguro: L’Origine Touranienne des Americains Tupis-Caribes 
et des Anciens Egyptiens. Vienne, 1876, 8vo., 155 pages. 




7 


The Lithuanian and the Lettic languages form a group of 
idioms spoken on the border of Eussia and North-eastern Prus¬ 
sia. Of tlie former no earlier monuments exist than what was 
left us from the sixteenth century, and since then the German, 
Polish and Russian languages have constantly gained upon the 
area of this curious idiom, in which the vowels have preserved 
as original a form as in the cognate Sanscrit. A third idiom be¬ 
longing to this group, tlie old Prussian, has disappeared in the 
seventeenth or early in the eighteenth century, and the days of 
the Lithuanian appear to be counted also, like those of some of 
our Indian languages. A circular has therefore been issued, in¬ 
viting linguists, ethnologists and historians to aid in the preser¬ 
vation of Lithuanian, by continuing Aug. Schleicher’s work of 
C(.)lle(diiig the myths, popular tales, songs and melodies, tradi¬ 
tions, ethnologic peculiarities, et(}., of this interesting people, and 
publishing them in hook form. To Prof. Voelkel, in Tilsit, all 
communications are to be addressed. The committee, which held 
its first session on the 14th of October, in Tilsit, is composed 
of well known men of scdence, as Mannhardt, Miklosich, Nessel- 
mann, Aug. Pott. 

The orthography of local names on the maps of East In¬ 
dia needs reform, and England makes an attempt to reform it 
authoritatively. The phonetic spelling of the early English 
soldiers and adventurers and of the modern scholars have made the 
confusion complete. To disentangle and rectify this babel of 
names taken from a hundred or more dialects, is a task as inter¬ 
esting as difficult. Who will undertake it for our Indian geo- 
gi’aphical names, which are written just as incorrectly? 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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